On a warm July day in the London office of Goldman Sachs, Steve Windsor, a partner at the bank, stepped up to the ping-pong table to serve. He lost that match, and every one thereafter.

Steve Windsor, Goldman Sachs

“That’s the problem with Goldman Sachs,” he said. “You say: ‘Have you played table tennis before?’ And they say: ‘Yes, a little bit, I used to play for my country.’ There’s no concept of letting the boss win at Goldman Sachs.”

The table tennis tournament was part of the bank’s third annual Greenhouse Sports Challenge. One working day a year, the bank’s divisions compete in table tennis and basketball tournaments – the respective venues are the bank’s canteen and the courtyard of its office in Fleet Street.

“Compete” is the operative word, although formally the event is intended to foster team spirit, boost morale and raise awareness for Greenhouse, a charity that aims to develop social, emotional and physical skills for young Londoners through high-quality, intensive sports programmes.

Banks have not had it all their own way in recent years, with profits squeezed, jobs cut and their public image badly dented. They use sports days to bring people together from different divisions and promote unity inside the organisations, according to those who take part.

Richard Evans, chief operating officer for equities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Barclays, said of the sporting events: “They are a great way for people to reduce stress and let off steam – and how often does a new employee get the opportunity to throw balls at the head of equities?”

At Deutsche Bank, 160 employees recently got on their bikes and cycled some of the UK stages of this year’s Tour de France. One group rode more than 300 miles to London from Yorkshire, while another rode the final 100 miles from Cambridge to London. At Nomura, employees recreated some of the
Tour’s stages in the spin studio inside the bank building. Some banks host open events, with JP Morgan, RBC Capital Markets and Standard Chartered all organising running events in London.

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There are two themes common across all of the events: boisterous banter and intense competition.

At Goldman Sachs, the teasing started before the first game of this year’s Greenhouse day.

Joe Mauro, head of fixed income, currencies and commodities European hedge fund sales and co-head of European macro rates sales at the US bank, somehow pulled a quad muscle kneeling down for his team’s photo, much to the delight of some of the 42-year-old’s teammates.

Brian Levine, co-head of global equities trading and execution services at the bank and a teammate of Mauro’s, said: “That’s the reason we need a strong bench. Guys get injured all the time, including Joe kneeling down for the photo shoot before the first game – he didn’t even get a minute of playing time.”

The event also unites non-participants – spectators crowd to support the team from their division on Greenhouse day. For the basketball final, employees pack the sides of the court and lean out of upstairs windows to watch.

Given bankers’ competitive nature, unsurprisingly, they take the events seriously. Deutsche Bank’s bike ride was explicitly not a race, as the roads were not closed to cars. Still, the pace would often quicken at the front whenever the riders reached a meaningful climb.

Adrian Munday, chief operating officer for the global liquidity management business at the bank, said: “For the most, we rode together as a group, we all wore a Deutsche Bike branded jersey with a ‘Born to Be’ logo, we looked pretty good. Naturally, people get competitive at certain points – there was a bit of a race up the iconic climbs.”

The banks try to channel this competitive energy towards fundraising. One employee at Morgan Stanley said he received a number of emails in the run-up to one race reminding him how his team was doing in the fundraising stakes.

But while the sports are part of the banks’ efforts to foster team spirit and raise money for charity, few things matter more for the individuals involved than the end result.

At Goldman Sachs, before his first basketball game of this year’s tournament, Levine said: “There’s going to be a play at some point in the day when someone goes for a lay-up and gets hit against the backboard – intentionally or unintentionally. People want to win. It’s Goldman Sachs after all.”

This article was first published in the print edition of Financial News dated August 4, 2014